Your personal cases of Viewer Gender Confusion

What are some cases of Viewer Gender Confusion you had, as a kid or otherwise? These are all ones I had as a kid that I can remember:

• Looney Tunes: I thought Tweety was a girl because of his long eyelashes, high voice, and that most of his merch in the 2000s was targeted to girls.
• Teletubbies: I thought Dipsy was a girl and Po was a boy. Not until I was years older than the demographic of the show did I find out I had it backwards.
• Blue's Clues: I actually had no idea what Shovel and Pail were because they're so androgynous. Apparently Shovel is male and Pail is female.

Angels in most classic religious artwork. They are mostly painted looking like tall blonde women with a kind, yet regal look. Much to my surprise I found in my teenage years that angels are usually supposed to be seen as masculine entities, while I sorta pictured them as nice winged ladies.

Both of these were quite recent.

• Heavy Magician: I wrongly assumed she was masculine partly because of her appearance (especially her top hat) and partly due to the fact that she turns into male characters for her boss fight.
• Urshifu: Before release, I initially assumed it was genderless like other legendaries/mythicals. Its actual gender ratio, 7 males to 1 female, is unheard of amongst its brethren, but ubiquitous amonst starter mons.

Count me in amongst the people who thought Freddi Fish was a boy growing up. I didn't find out until just a couple of years ago that she's a girl.

Oh, and before I got into Ginga Densetsu Weed, I thought the golden retriever puppy Mel was a girl. Though his gender is established fairly quickly in his debut episode, so that was over quickly.

Edited by MagmaTeaMerry on Oct 13th 2020 at 9:55:42 PM

I always thought Blue was a guy until I got older and read about Blue's Clues on TV Tropes.

Same.

When I was a kid, I thought Ruby Moon actually was a lady. ^_^;;

They are still quite cute in a skirt!

EDIT:Also I thought the same!

Edited by AegisP on Oct 13th 2020 at 6:42:09 AM

So, I read the Cookie Run comics and well..

Let's just say Alchemist Cookie's gender took me a while to discover. The lack of eyelashes doesn't really help imo

@Magma Tea Merry: Me too, for Freddi Fish!

I've said this before, but when I was a kid, I thought for sure that Dimentio was a girl. His jester outfit looked like a dress to me, and his red mouth (facepaint?) like lipstick. I mentioned this online somewhere, and someone corrected me. That was embarrassing, to say the least.

Edited by DrNoPuma on Oct 15th 2020 at 11:14:17 AM

When I first saw the design for the Pokemon Hitmonchan I thought it was female, because it ends in -chan and looks like it's wearing a skirt. (I think I thought Hitmonchan was a girl and Hitmonlee was a guy.) Imagine my surprise at finding out it's a male-only species.

I guess my examples are more "Listener Gender Confusion" - e.g. hearing a song somewhere and incorrectly guessing the gender of the singer from the pitch and tone of their singing voice. One case was with "Lazy Eye" by Silversun Pickups, and it's apparently pretty common, as it's mentioned in the band's works page. The other case was "Kennedy" by Kill Hannah - though the singer is male, in this particular song anyway, his voice kind of reminds me of Shirley Manson - I think the first time I caught the end of the song on the radio, I thought it was a new Garbage single.

Edited by MikeK on Oct 15th 2020 at 2:14:52 AM

Visual Kei.

Ash Ketchum dressing like a girl where he looks surprisingly attractive even though we know he is a guy.

• Kyubey, I thought he was female at first due to his appearance and his English Dub Voice didn’t help.
• Darwin due to his voice and visible eyelashes.
• Terk, pretty self explanatory.

I started looking into ''Danganronpa and I saw an image of Shuichi Saihara and thought he was a cool butch girl. It disappointed me a bit to learn he wasn't.

Playing Street Fighter II at a friend's house as a kid, I legit thought Vega (Claw) was a girl. (Yeah, with him clearly being a Walking Shirtless Scene... I was a dumb kid okay don't judge lol you're talking to the same girl who unironically liked Bikini Karate Babes and Rumble Roses growing up)

On Street Fighter, I thought Sakura might've been a boy for a long time.

On Incredibles 2 I mistook the DEVTECH super Brick for a man, something I learnt being wrong right here lol.

It took me a while as a kid to realize that Linny was a girl.

Oh yeah, that's another one for me. Except like the Teletubbies example I had no idea until I grew up

Edited by arimothereindeer on Jan 21st 2021 at 1:14:23 AM

I mistook Vitani from The Lion King II for a boy due to her having a bit of a mane and a deeper voice.

I used to think that Blue and Terk were boys when I was little.

• I thought Snowball II was a tomcat until I was about 13.
• I have a vague memory of thinking Charlie Sonnor was a girl, but I was like five and it got cleared up pretty quickly.

Oh, I can't believe I forgot this one: When I first watched Axis Powers Hetalia many years ago, I thought China was a female until I saw an episode where he was addressed as "Mr." by another character. To be fair, aside from his appearance he also had Crossdressing Voices, both in the Japanese and English versions.